“Why doesn’t my character have any balls?” Hugh Grant on his ‘Notting Hill’ role

Actor Hugh Grant has complained that the character he played in Notting Hill, the hit 1999 movie in which he appeared alongside Julia Roberts, lacked “balls”.

One of a number of Richard Curtis rom-coms that featured Grant in a leading role in the 1990s and 2000s, Notting Hill starred the now 64-year-old as William Thacker, a London book store owner who embarks on a romance with Anna Scott, a fictional Hollywood icon played by Roberts.

“Why the hell didn’t you stop her?”

Looking back over his more than four-decade acting career in an interview with Vanity Fair last week, Grant described Thacker as “despicable” and “awful”, rounding on him for lacking the courage to protect Scott during a scene in which she is hounded by paparazzi.

“Whenever [I’m] flicking the channels at home after a few drinks and this comes up, I just think: ‘Why doesn’t my character have any balls?’” Grant told Vanity Fair. “There’s a scene in this film where she’s in my house and the paps come to the front door and ring the bell. And I think I just let her go past me and open the door. And that’s awful.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend, or indeed now a wife, who hasn’t said: ‘Why the hell didn’t you stop her, what’s wrong with you?’ And I don’t really have an answer to that. It was how it was written and I think he’s despicable, really.”

“I’m not going to be as good as her”

Grant also recalled the feelings of inferiority he endured as he shared the big screen with Roberts – now a four-time Oscar nominee who went on to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2001, for her performance in Erin Brockovich.

“Probably all the time with Julia, as with any brilliant actress, you’re just thinking, ‘Oh Christ, they’re really good. I’m not going to be as good as her,’ Grant revealed. “And she’s great at emoting and she’s got that kind of quality where it looks like her skin is wafer thin. You can sort of see her soul.”

How much money did Notting Hill take at the box office?

Released in May 1999, Notting Hill took just under $394 million at movie theaters worldwide, per Box Office Mojo, including $116 million in the US and Canada. It is among the highest-grossing British films of all time.

Grant and Roberts both received Golden Globe nominations for the movie, which won the Audience Award for the year’s most popular film at the 2000 BAFTAs.